The movement was set on foot in the beginning of 1901, when the five leading technical institutions-civil engineers, mechanical engineers, naval architects, iron and steel institute, and electrical engineers-supplied funds and formed committees in order to introduce into this country a national standardized system, and thus bring British manufacturers into line with their American and German rivals. The work grew enormously, and the Government, recognizing its national importance, made a grant of £3,000 ($14,600) toward the expenses, and now the leading manufacturers are also subscribing to the support of the Engineering Standards Committee. No fewer than 27 committees have been at work during the past three years, with 170 members, including 25 representatives of Government departments, and the result of their labors so far is very satisfactory.

Referring to the committee on bridges and general building construction, presided over by Sir Benjamin Baker, the report says that their labors have been confined principally to drawing up a series of standards so as to meet all the requirements of general building construction, and they have succeeded in making a considerable reduction from the large number formerly in vogue, and some of the leading firms have already adopted them.

In the matter of tramway rails, the subcommittee have agreed upon a series of standards which have been approved by the Board of Trade and have even been rolled abroad, and the report of the subcommittee on railway rails is nearing completion.

The standardizing of electrical plant is presided over by Sir William Preece, and four subcommittees have been doing a lot of useful work. The subcommittee on generators, motors, and transformers have been collecting evidence for the determination of standard voltages and frequencies, and also the standard sizes for dynamos and motors. The other electrical committees deal with such subjects as cables and conduits, telegraphs and telephones, and the temperatures of insulating materials.

The Indian government appointed a conference to discuss the question of standard types of locomotives, and they have referred some of their findings to be dealt with by the Engineering Standards Committee and five committees have since dealt with the various branches of Indian locomotives and submitted a report to the Secretary of State for India, setting forth the types of locomotives which they think best adapted for Indian railways. It is anticipated that great advantages will be gained by the interchangeability of the different parts of locomotives, the object being to enable the British manufacturers to deal with the Indian orders and deliver the material more quickly, an advantage hitherto held by Americans and Germans through their system of standardization.

The work of the shipbuilding committee has been under the chairmanship of Mr. Archibald Denny, and their object has been to decide upon a series of sections which would give sufficient graduation and yet not be larger than could possibly be avoided, so as to reduce to a minimum the plant and stock of rolls to be kept by the steel makers. This committee has also been discussing the sizes of test pieces for iron and steel material used in the construction of ships and their machinery with the object of arriving at a common basis of agreement between the many divergent specifications and restrictions at present in vogue.

It may be mentioned that the French Government have sent over a commissioner to study the procedure and the lines upon which the Engineering Standards Committee has been organized.

DISEASES OF STEEL AND THEIR TREATMENT.

Under date of September 4, 1903, United States Consul Halstead, of Birmingham, England, transmitted the following printed extract of a paper read before a meeting of an institute in that city relative to the diseases of steel and their treatment:

Mr. C. H. Ridsdale (Middlesbrough) presented a paper on "Diseases of steel," referring primarily to soft steel. He said that, with all our progress in the study of steel, there is still no definite and approved system of tests published for recognizing its diseases" and determining their origin by the results of which those. concerned will abide. Analysis failed to explain most of the troubles met with. He had attempted to collate various types of faults. He had pushed his investigation from both ends-forward by synthetical reproduction of known irregularities of manufacture, and backward from the manifestation of the disease till its unknown cause was detected. He remarked the one great hindrance to progress in tracing faults to their origin was the strong hold various notions had, which, though perfectly right in a general sense, when carried to an extreme were misleading. One such notion was the extent to which impurities, particularly sulphur and phosphorus, were hurtful. Nothing was farther from his wish than to advocate indiscriminate laxity in the matter of impurities. What was wanted was not to advocate stretching the limits in order to admit inferior material, but only to face fairly whether or not by raising the limits in many instances a material answering the requirements as well, or sometimes better, would be obtained more cheaply or readily. Another mistaken notion was that the maker ought to render his material proof against being spoiled in successive working-up processes. The fact was that no make of steel had yet been met with that could not be spoiled quite simply. The author then considered at length the various diseases to which steel was subject, and continued that it would be far too bold a claim to pretend for one moment that as soon as the disease had been successfully traced and identified a commercially applicable remedy could be at once suggested. To avoid brittleness and hardness and to obtain toughness and softness with a minimum of trouble, he advocated reheating rapidly after the steel had become cold and deprecated continuing to heat steel which was already hot. Respecting the cure of faults already produced in material, this, from the nature of the product, was often scarcely possible, as, for instance, where through red shortness or hardness cracks or fracture, respectively, had actually occurred; in other cases a cure was not practicable, the cost being prohibitive. Still, there were some cases where a very simple heat treatment or similar remedy would be quite effective and at a very slight cost.

Mr. J. E. Stead said that it would have been better if Mr. Ridsdale had termed his paper the "ailments" of steel. He did not think that steel had many diseases. They were chiefly ailments which might easily be cured. The diseases Mr. Ridsdale referred to could be mostly removed by a very simple reheating treatment. He would refer to only one point. When engineers made specifications it should in justice to them be said that they did so with the object of getting materials of the very best character. It was quite possible for steel containing high impurities, properly treated, to be better than the very purest material improperly treated, but it must be remembered that for engineering work the lower the phosphorus in the

steel the better, and if such steel were also properly treated and forged it would be always better than a material which contained a higher amount of impurity.

Professor Turner (Birmingham) said the institute was very much indebted to Mr. T. R. Ridsdale for his attempt to put on a scientific basis a method of investigating defects of steel and iron. He was very glad to see that Mr. Ridsdale advocated the synthetic method of discovering the causes of the defect. He himself had tried to discover the cause of blisters on wrought iron in this way. He had introduced into a specimen those constituents which were supposed to be the cause of blisters, but the blisters did not follow. The explanation, he thought, was that one need not only to have the materials necessary to produce the fault, but the proper conditions also.

BRITISH MOTOR-CAR ACT.

Under date of September 9, 1903, United States Consul Halstead, of Birmingham, England, transmits articles from the Birmingham Daily Post of August 29 relative to the British motor-car act, which comes into operation on January 1, 1904. The following abstracts of an editorial in the Post--the law itself being too long for publication-gives a full enough idea of the scope and intentions of the act:

Although the act does not come into operation before the first day of 1904, there are several matters which will require attention in advance, as, for instance, the registration of cars, the licensing of drivers, and the framing of regulations by the local government board with regard to identification marks. It will be well, therefore, that motor-car owners and the general public, and certainly the police, should make themselves conversant with the new act before the end of the year. It is probable, too, that car builders will occupy their time in devising the most convenient means for exhibiting the identification marks, which, it will be observed, are to be "easily distinguishable," day or night. Every motor car will have to be registered with the council of the county or borough in which the owner resides, and every car will be assigned a separate number. A mark indicating this registered number must then be fixed on the car, and there is a substantial penalty for omitting to keep this mark easily distinguishable. The fee for registration is 20s. ($4.86) for a car and 5s. ($1.20) for a motor cycle; from which it must be understood that a motor cycle is, for the purposes of this act, a motor car. Not only must the car or cycle be registered, but the driver of a motor car or motor cycle must take out a license, the fee being 5s., and this license may be suspended for any offense under the act. It will no longer be legally possible for any person to drive a motor car unless he is at least 17 years of age or to drive a motor cycle unless he is 14 years of age; and this license will have to be produced on the demand of a police constable. This requirement, if enforced as it should be, will prevent the licensed driver handing over the care of the car to any lady or gentleman passenger on board who has the ambition to try his or her hand "at the wheel," to the terror of all and the possible danger of many.

Two very drastic provisions will claim the serious attention of motor-car or motor-cycle drivers and owners, for owners will be under statutory obligation to give all assistance necessary to secure the conviction of an offending driver. There is Section I, which reads as follows:

"If any person drives a motor car on a public highway recklessly or negligently, or at a speed or in a manner which is dangerous to the public, having regard to all

the circumstances of the case, including the nature, condition, and use of the highway, and to the amount of traffic which actually is at the time, or which might reasonably be expected to be, on the highway, that person shall be guilty of an offense under this act."

This is as clear as words can be, and anyone who drives a car or motor cycle on a public highway "recklessly or negligently, or at a speed or in a manner which is dangerous to the public," must reckon on paying for it; and if he refuses to give his name and address or to produce his license, or if his motor car does not bear the proper marks of identification, he may be apprehended without a warrant by any police constable. For a second offense there is the liability to imprisonment. One sentence in this first section is very important. The justices are to consider the use of the highway and the amount of traffic which may be "reasonably expected" on such highway, in judging of the recklessness or negligence of the driver. The provision gives the first claim to the road to its ordinary traffic. The motor driver must be always on the lookout for the traffic which has the prior claim to the use of the highway. Moreover, there is power under the act to prohibit or restrict the driving of any motor cars on any part of a road which does not exceed 16 feet in width or "on which ordinary motor-car traffic" would be especially dangerous. This action should bar the motor car out of many narrow country lanes, where it often proves a source of the utmost danger. Now we come to Section IX, which fixes a limit of speed. The fight for this speed limit was one of the features of the session, and we much question if the Government have heard the last of it. The section reads as follows:

"Section IV of the principal act (which relates to the rate of speed of motor cars) is hereby repealed, but a person shall not, under any circumstances, drive a motor car on a public highway at a speed exceeding 20 miles per hour, and, within any limits or place referred to in regulations made by the local government board with a view to the safety of the public, on the application of the local authority of the area in which the limits or place are situate, a person shall not drive a motor car at a speed exceeding 10 miles per hour."

A great many persons professed themselves unable to see the advantage of a fixed limit of speed. Yet the advantage is very plain. It is not always easy to prove actual "recklessness," nor negligence," nor "danger," but, none the less, there may be an amount of personal inconvenience, public nuisance, and mind distraction, often producing temporary nerve failure, created by the rushing past on the highway of a powerful engine at a speed equal to that of a fast train; and it was felt imperative to put a stop, once for all, to any such speeds on the public highway of 30, 40, 50, and even 60 miles an hour. Motor road racing had to be abolished, all question of physical danger apart, and the utmost speed that the House of Commons would sanction was 20 miles an hour. It entirely depends on the motor-car and motor-cycle owners' reasonable conformity to this limit whether or not it will be reduced when the act comes up for revision at the end of three years. The second part of the same section requires explanation. What it says is that the local government board, “with a view to the safety of the public, on the application of the local authority;" may define any limits or place within which a person shall not drive a motor car at a speed exceeding 10 miles per hour." We shall certainly look to the local authority to apply to the local government board to fix this 10-mile speed limit to all the business streets of Birmingham, and the local authorities concerned should do the same with regard to other populous places. We commend this part of Section IX to the populations most concerned, who may be advised to bring pressure to bear on their local authorities to secure this additional safeguard against danger to themselves or their children using the public thoroughfare.

A few minor provisions deserve notice. There are the penalties. These are considerable, running up to a fine of £50 ($243), with the alternative of three months' imprisonment. As to speed, it is very properly provided that there shall be no conviction for exceeding the speed limit unless on the testimony of more than one witness. Chiefs of police should take special precautions for training their men to judge of the rate of speed. We doubt if many persons would satisfy a really rigid test. An automatic speed register affixable to all classes of motors would be a boon. Local authorities have under this act to undertake a duty too long neglected. They will have to erect not only notice boards indicating any special limitation of speed, but also notice boards "denoting dangerous corners, crossroads, and precipitous places where such notice posts appear to be necessary." Such notice boards have long been wanted and have only been in any degree provided by the enterprise of a private organization. We can notice only one more regulation. Section VI provides that "a person driving a motor-car shall, in any case, if an accident occurs to any person, whether on foot, on horseback, or in a vehicle, or to any horse or vehicle in charge of any person, owing to the presence of the motor car on the road, stop, and, if required, give his name and address and also the name and address of the owner and the registration mark or number of the car; and if any person knowingly acts in contravention of this section he shall be liable, on summary conviction, in respect of the first offense to a fine not exceeding £10 ($48.66), and in respect of the second offense to a fine not exceeding £20 ($97.32), and in respect of any subsequent offense to a fine not exceeding £20, or, in the discretion of the court, to a term of imprisonment not exceeding one month." It should seem strange that any such provision is needed, but the extraordinary callousness of a certain class of motor drivers has made it absolutely necessary. Indeed, this particular form of motor selfishness has done much to arouse the public indignation that called this act into existence.

GOLD MINING IN THE YUKON TERRITORY.

Under date of September 9, 1903, United States Consul-General A. W. Edwards, of Montreal, Canada, transmits the following extract from the Montreal Gazette of the same date, relative to the gold-mining industry of the Yukon Territory and the importance to Canada of its proper development and protection:

"History of Klondike Mining Concessions" is the title of a pamphlet issued by the Dawson Board of Trade, which says:

"In the latter part of the year 1896 the famous discoveries of placer gold were made on the creeks in the basin of the Klondike River. These were followed in the years 1897 and 1898 by the scarcely less famous placer-gold discoveries in the basin of Indian River and on the hills and benches adjoining all the creeks on which discoveries had previously been made. During the past two or three years rich placer ground has been found in the basin of the Stewart River, notably on Duncan, Clear, and Henderson creeks, also in the Forty-mile district. The more famous creeks in the Klondike basin are Eldorado, Bonanza, Hunker, Last Chance, and Bear, while in the Indian River basin Dominion, Sulphur, Gold Run, and Quartz are the most noted. Not only in the beds of the creeks in both Klondike and Indian River basins, but also on the adjacent hills and benches the wealth of placer gold discovered has been enormous.